мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼

He and his wife, Dawn, owners of Prison City Pub & Brewery, welcomed an audience of about 50 Tuesday afternoon to 251 North St., future site of their new production facility: Prison City Farmhouse.

Friends, investors and local officials listened as Marc Schulz recounted how the downtown Auburn brewpub grew into the regional destination that will occupy the ground where they stood. From the facility's reveal as part of Auburn's 2016 Downtown Revitalization Initiative proposal to the sites that didn't work out, the process has been one of twists and turns, he said. So he thanked local government and economic development bodies — and, with cracks in his voice, Prison City's staff of 40 — for their part in making the afternoon's groundbreaking ceremony possible.

"We never anticipated this, ever," Schulz told those gathered at the groundbreaking. "Thanks for being as excited as we are about this project."

In an interview with мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼ Thursday, Dawn Schulz said Prison City Farmhouse is scheduled to open in June or July.

The facility is a pre-engineered 14,000-square-foot metal building that will take four months to arrive and be assembled, she said. The foundation should be poured before winter. The house on the south side of the property, which Prison City considered renovating as a bed-and-breakfast, will be demolished soon due to its poor condition. 

The new building will house both a brewery and a tasting room with office and retail space. That's phase one of Prison City's expansion, Schulz said. Phase two will add two outbuildings and outdoor activity space to the property, she continued, and renovate its 8,000-square-foot dairy barn. Though the purpose of the outbuildings has yet to be determined, the barn will be available for events like weddings and concerts. It's possible the Prison City tasting room will be moved to one of the outbuildings in phase two, Schulz said, and replaced by a room for aging beer in barrels.

Prison City will also plant fruit and vegetable crops on the property to provide fresh ingredients for beers, Schulz said. That's something the brewery couldn't do at 197-199 North St., where it previously looked to build its expansion until costs exceeded projections. That property was 2.1 acres, Schulz said, while 251 North St. is more than double that size at 5.5 acres.

The facility will create 20-25 jobs and raise production of Prison City's beers from less than 1,000 barrels a year to 10,000, though Schulz said that mark will take about three years to reach. That's because brewer Ben Maeso and his team will have to master their new, bigger brewing system. But they've already gotten a head start on the process of scaling up their beers.

This summer, Maeso and his team brewed a batch of Riot India pale ale on the 30-barrel system at Young Lion Brewing Co. in Canandaigua. That experience, and another set for January, will help the brewers ensure Prison City's beers taste the same on the facility's new 20-barrel system as they did on the downtown brewpub's 5-barrel system. Being located within the city of Auburn will also help on that front, Schulz said, as the facility will share the same water source as the brewpub. Water chemistry can significantly affect the taste and feel of a beer.

Schulz stressed that nothing will change at the brewpub, or its system, after Prison City Farmhouse opens. The smaller system will be used to develop new recipes, she continued, and brew special batches. And because the new facility will only offer small bites for food, it will complement — not replace — the full restaurant experience at Prison City's downtown location. The brewpub attracted 110,000 visitors last year, Schulz said, about 65% of which came from outside Cayuga County. With another destination in the form of the production facility, she hopes that number rises.

Prison City expands as regional breweries like and have made headlines in recent months with their business woes. But the Auburn brewery doesn't quite fall into the same category, Schulz said. Not only do those regional breweries produce far more beer, but their business models also include distribution to stores and bars.

"Even though (10,000 barrels) seems like a big jump for us, it's still a really tiny brewery in the scheme of things, and that's on purpose," she said. "We don't want to get into the regional category and try to compete for shelf space. We want to try to do as much taproom sales vs. distribution as possible. When you get into large-scale distribution, that's where some of that struggle comes."

Prison City also commands a reputation for quality that those regional breweries don't. Beers like Mass Riot IPA and Wham Whams imperial stout have earned the brewery No. 1 rankings, medals and festival raves nationwide since the brewpub opened in December 2014. The facility will raise production on those beers, and can and bottle them, in order to make them as regularly available as possible, Schulz said, as well as other IPAs in the Riot series (Riot in Vermont, etc.), Crispy Boys lager, sours and more. Cider and nonalcoholic seltzer are also possibilities, she said.

Building the facility will cost roughly $4.25 million, according to documents Prison City filed with the Auburn Industrial Development Authority. The authority granted the brewery a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement in July, with sales, mortgage and property tax relief totaling $460,342. The Schulzes will fund the project with bank financing and equity. In 2017, the expansion was awarded a $900,000 grant from the Central New York Regional Economic Development Council to reimburse Prison City for a portion of machinery and equipment in exchange for creating 20 jobs. 

Also in July, the facility secured site plan approval from the Auburn Planning Board. 

"We're beyond excited to get rolling with this," Dawn Schulz said.